{"id":11452,"date":"2012-10-18T18:24:09","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T22:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=11452"},"modified":"2012-10-23T18:26:05","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T22:26:05","slug":"payne-iacocca-for-mitt-and-barack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2012\/10\/payne-iacocca-for-mitt-and-barack","title":{"rendered":"Payne: Iacocca for Mitt (and Barack)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;America needs a turnaround,&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.detroitnews.com\/article\/20121018\/POLITICS01\/210180513\/Former-Chrysler-CEO-Iacocca-endorses-Romney?odyssey=tab\">announced<\/a>\u00a0former Chrysler turnaround artist and celebrity executive Lee Iacocca Thursday. &#8221; Our people are hurting. . . and we just aren&#8217;t doing the things that would get our country back on the right track.&#8221; In short, Obama&#8217;s policies have failed and the country needs competent management, says Romney&#8217;s fellow businessman.<\/p>\n<p>But in fairness to Obama, it should be noted that Iacocca himself once endorsed two cornerstones of the Obama formula: auto bailouts and creating a new green economy.<\/p>\n<p>Though critical of its details, Iacocca has praised the White House&#8217;s political, Chapter 363 restructuring of the automakers. More significantly, Iacocca has long been an advocate of government-subsidized efforts to electrify America&#8217;s vehicle fleet &#8211; an effort that has proved a spectacular boondoggle as government -backed battery-makers like A123 Systems have gone bankrupt.<\/p>\n<p>The founder of Lido Motors ten years ago, Iacocca was an early advocate of so-called NEVs, neighborhood electric vehicles, that in 2009 won a $2500 federal tax credit for buyers via Obama&#8217;s stimulus blowout. NEVs are one of the clever loopholes that automakers have carved out to help them meet Democrats&#8217; onerous MPG standards.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, Iacocca has been a strong advocate for pure electric cars like Nissan&#8217;s electric Leaf &#8211; which receive a $7500 federal tax credit &#8211; saying &#8220;there&#8217;s going to be a scramble for the pure electric car.&#8221; Struggling A123, however, is a poster child for an electric market that has failed to materialize as the Leaf and other electrics have seen sales sour.<\/p>\n<p>Auto icon Iacocca&#8217;s endorsement gives a powerful jolt to a Romney campaign that Obama has tried to caricature as anti-auto for opposing the UAW bailout. But Iacocca is also a reminder that plenty of CEOs swallowed Obama&#8217;s fairy tale vision of a new Green economy.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;America needs a turnaround,&#8221;\u00a0announced\u00a0former Chrysler turnaround artist and celebrity executive Lee Iacocca Thursday. &#8221; Our people are hurting. . . and we just aren&#8217;t doing the things that would get our country back on the right track.&#8221; In short, Obama&#8217;s policies have failed and the country needs competent management, says Romney&#8217;s fellow businessman. But in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[2316,13,1104],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11453,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11452\/revisions\/11453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}